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President Barack Obama’s plan to combat climate change could generate dramatic changes within
the industry that supplies most of Ohio’s electricity.

A sweeping plan that Obama unveiled yesterday during a speech at Georgetown University calls for
greater use of climate-friendly fuels, including natural gas, wind and solar power.

It also orders federal agencies to help states and communities prepare for the consequences of a
hotter climate, including heat waves, droughts, rising sea levels and more-extreme weather.

Obama’s decision to order the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to “work expeditiously” to
devise carbon-dioxide limits for coal-fired power plants likely will have the biggest impact on
Ohio. Coal generates more than 80 percent of the electricity in Ohio.

“Right now there are no federal limits on the amount of carbon pollution those plants can pump
into our air,” Obama said. “That’s not right, that’s not safe, and it needs to stop.”

Hailed by environmental advocates as a historic step to combat climate change, the president
offered no details on how much carbon dioxide utilities must cut or when they will have to cut it.
Power plants emitted more than 2.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide in 2012.

Obama’s order directs the EPA to have a carbon-reduction plan by June 2014. It’s based in part
on a 2007 Supreme Court decision that declared carbon dioxide a pollutant the agency can regulate
under the Clean Air Act.

“I think the law in light of the Supreme Court ruling is very clear,” said Frank O’Donnell,
president of Clear Air Watch, a nonprofit organization in Washington pledged to protect clean-air
laws.

Industry advocates and Republican lawmakers said the president’s plan would raise the price of
electricity, harm the economy and eliminate thousands of jobs.

One of the biggest problems power companies face is that a commercial-scale system to capture
carbon dioxide has yet to be developed.

The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that if the most commonly used model were adapted to
power plants today, it would drain 30 percent of the plants’ power output and double consumers’
electricity bills.

“Local communities will lose millions in tax revenue, and more than 6,000 megawatts, enough
energy to power thousands of homes, will be taken off the grid,” said Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio.

In 2011, Columbus-based American Electric Power abandoned a project that captured and buried
37,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide near its Mountaineer plant along the Ohio River after West
Virginia utility officials refused to let the company collect $334 million in project costs from
customers.

AEP spokeswoman Melissa McHenry said it’s important that any new plan to limit a plant’s carbon
dioxide include enough time to develop a system that would work.

“They have to recognize there is no technology to do that,” she said.

Columbus-based research giant Battelle is burying carbon dioxide in a project sponsored by the
federal government and industry. Several tests have proved successful, said spokesman T.R. Massey,
and the partnership is gearing up to bury 1 million tons in northern Michigan.

The president said yesterday that he is acting on behalf of the American people, who can no
longer wait for Congress. Legislators have repeatedly failed to pass a climate-change plan.

“These policies, rejected even by the last Democratic-controlled Congress, will shutter power
plants, destroy good-paying American jobs and raise electricity bills for families that can
scarcely afford it.”

Obama dismissed such fears, saying American innovation would devise solutions to protect the
environment and the economy.

“In 1990, when we decided to do something about acid rain, they said our electricity bills would
go up, the lights would go off, businesses around the country would suffer. None of it happened,”
he said.